I have grown weary.

[54ball]

Someone posted the ingredients in Ptrodex a couple of days back and it was the same as black powder with a few other substances thrown in?

Yes but it has this additional ingredient....Potassium perchlorate

Potassium perchlorate is the inorganic salt with the chemical formula KClO₄. Like other perchlorates, this salt is a strong oxidizer although it usually reacts very slowly with organic substances.
Notice...Chlorate.
Chlorate??? Mmmmmmn. This sounds a lot like.....bleach.

Chlorates have interesting characteristics when it comes to steel. In short, they can imbed in the steel on the molecular level, in other words, "chlorinating the steel".
Muriatic acid can chlorinate steel. While this treatment will remove rust, it chlorinates the steel thus making it "rust-out/rust away" at an accelerated rate.
If you want to destroy something steel....treat it with muriatic acid.
I suppose the acrid smell of Pyrodex is the Potassium perchlorate.

Pyrodex having a Chlorate explains the corrosion issues.

 

[springfield art]

I'm weary off all this stuff too.....
All of this shall pass.
With this said,
I guess I'm not quite weary enough to start yet another thread on it.

Touche.

 

[PastorB]

I think we sometimes over analyze stuff that is of little or no importance. As I said in another post a while back, what we do shouldn't be so complicated or devisive. The world is not a nice place, and getting worse exponentially. If I want bad or disturbing news, I can get that anywhere. I come here to learn and enjoy, because I realize other folks have good ideas too. Just for the record, my first muzzleloader was this .54 Charles Daly/Investarms Hawken, I bought in 1977 to hunt deer with. I lived in a shotgun or muzzleloader only zone of Wisconsin, decided I liked one accurate shot over a tube full of slugs. I knew nothing about muzzleloaders, the guys at the shop got me started with some basic instructions and supplies. For $69 I got the rifle, dry patches that I lubed with Crisco, a .45-70 shell they had laying around for a powder measure, 100 .530 balls, and a tub of black powder, Pyrodex RS. Didn't know the difference between real black and "fakes". When patches ran out, I used regular old cut up t-shirts for patches, never measuring the thickness or weave pattern, nor inspecting whether it was cotton or some other substance. Cleaned with the supplied jag, old t-shirts, and 3 in 1 oil. It worked. Took a lot of game, scores of deer, a few bears, 3 elk, and piles of headshot squirrels and rabbits. Got many more rifles and smoothbores now, including several original antiques the Lord has blessed with. Sometimes miss my youth and the simplistic ignorance I enjoyed then! Just had a good time, and my rifle is still here today, shooting as good as ever (I don't, old man eyes!) after a 41 year diet of Pyrodex. I save my hard to get "Real black" for flints. Chill and use what makes you happy and works for you. If you got a good idea, share it with us who haven't learned everything yet.

 

[Idaho Ron]

I would never say Pyrodex doesn't work. It most certainly does, and I used it fine. It absolutely does rust sooner, and is not as forgiving as real blackpowder.

That said, I will never, ever recommend Pyrodex to anyone for one simple reason. 777 exists. You can find 777 everywhere Pyrodex is sold, and it is superior in every conceivable way.

Unless it just isn't as accurate. When I tested pyrodex P vs T7 I found with my paper patched bullets the pyrodex P was far superior in accuracy than tge T7.

 

[megasupermagnum]

I would never go against your experience Ron, as I know you have done the testing. I also know you are doing things with your rifles far and beyond the normal guy. 777 has one big drawback, and that is that the fouling forms very hard, AKA 777 crud ring. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that is going to be the #1 cause of accuracy loss with 777. So I suppose I was incorrect in my original statement. Pyrodex is superior to 777 in this one instance. If you were shooting a well lubed patched ball, you might not even notice.

 

[The Crisco Kid]

As I've mentioned before, the idea behind the muzzle loader hunting seasons was to see if we could emulate our ancestors with the resources they had. They had iron sights, wood stocks, round balls and black powder. That worked fine until the "systems analyists" showed up and figured out how they could hunt with plastic stocks, scope sights, and smokeless powder. Too bad, they miss out on the real satisfaction.

 

[Eric Krewson]

The idea behind the initial M/L season in Alabama was different, nothing to do with history. There was a bucks only culture and seasons reflected this, you could kill a doe with archery gear but not with a gun. This was in the days before compounds and very few people killed any does with traditionally gear.

In some parts of Alabama (black belt) the doe population was way out of control. Some of the wildlife folk proposed an either *** black powder season to get people to shoot does. This idea really appealed to hunters, none of us had any B/P experience so we all bought a TC or similar rifle and found out how much fun a good M/L hunt was.

Before this M/L season if you killed a doe you would probably be cussed out and shunned by any hunters that found out. The idea was rampant that killing does would cause an extinction of deer in the state and an end to the deer season, an antiquated idea that exists even today on some hunting clubs in the state.

We all saw the hunting in Alabama get better after the doe population was brought under control, one can legally kill 2 or 3 does a day here now and we still have too many.